Gov. Baker urges pay raise opponents to call lawmakers

Monday

Jan 30, 2017 at 5:40 PMJan 30, 2017 at 5:47 PM

By Andy Metzger / STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

STATE HOUSE, BOSTON: People opposed to the pay raise bill vetoed on Friday should "make their voices heard" as the House and Senate prepare for override votes this week, Gov. Charlie Baker said Monday.

Massachusetts residents have already been dialing into elected officials to give feedback about the legislation that would cost $18 million to hike the pay of legislative leaders, statewide elected officials and judges.

"It was the single largest number of calls we've gotten on one day, on Friday," Baker said during his monthly "Ask the Governor" segment Monday on WGBH Radio. "And we've gotten a lot of calls on a lot of things. I mean, keep in mind, we're the administration that had the MBTA breakdown."

With a 116-43 vote in the House on Wednesday and a 31-9 vote in the Senate on Thursday, both branches would have enough votes to clear the two-thirds threshold for a veto override if that level of support holds.

Both branches meet in formal sessions on Thursday, giving them an opportunity to pass the pay raise bill into law over the governor's objections.

"If it comes over from the House we are planning to take it up on Thursday," Senate President Stan Rosenberg told the News Service on Monday.

The matter came up when a caller - identified as Ken in Amesbury - thanked the governor for the veto and asked, "Is there anything more that we can do, the taxpayers of Massachusetts, to keep these legislators from overriding your veto?"

All Republicans in the House and Senate voted against the measure, and they were joined by nine Democrats in the House and three Democrats in the Senate. Those hoping to sustain the veto would need to flip either 10 Democrats in the House or five in the Senate.

"People should encourage those who share our views to reach out to and speak to their legislators about it, because that is in fact the best way to bring attention to this and to get it on people's radars," Baker said. He said, "I think it's important for people to make their voices heard."

The bill (H 58) is the first major legislation to reach the governor's desk this session.

Last week Rosenberg said the legislation would provide needed updates to the compensation of lawmakers, which starts at a base salary of about $62,000.

"We are losing young people every election cycle," Rosenberg told reporters Thursday. He said, "Particularly the younger members who are trying to start families and start their own career - they cannot live on this.

When he vetoed the bill on Friday, Baker also suggested that the bill would eliminate a ballot law, which remains in state statute, prohibiting statewide officeholders from receiving pay for more than two straight terms, though evidence suggests that law was already effectively killed by the courts.

Secretary of State William Galvin, a Brighton Democrat now in his sixth term, said the Supreme Judicial Court struck down that ballot law, an assertion backed up by media coverage at the time of the 1997 decision.

"What you had is in the statute unconstitutional language now for 20 years - that's a 1997 case - which was never cleaned up because it was just dead law, dead letter. All they're doing now is cleaning that up when they're rewriting the section. That's the one part of this whole effort that I have absolutely no problem with, cleaning up the statute," Galvin told the News Service on Monday. "It's ridiculous to leave dead-letter language in there."

Baker had suggested the bill would make substantive changes, overturning the 1994 ballot law. "Upon our further review, this legislation would effectively repeal the terms limits voters set for constitutional offices at the ballot box in 1994," Baker said on Friday.

Galvin said Baker's suggestion that cleaning up the old statute was a "policy decision" was "misguided to say the least."

Standing to make another $28,000 per year under the bill, bringing his salary to $165,000, Galvin said the size of his raise "doesn't trouble me" though he is bothered by the overall cost of the bill.

"The $18 million does trouble me," Galvin said.

Baker was scheduled to meet Monday afternoon with legislative leaders but their meeting was cancelled Monday morning.